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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Khorne Tower of Skulls kit bash!

Greetings fellow wargamers! Caleb with White Metal Games here and I have a special kit bash article for you today.

I know Rob at Spikey Bitz is very proud of his custom Tower of Skulls. We've all seen it and to be fair it is amazing. However there's more than one way to skin a cat, and they're certainly more than one way to build a Tower of Skulls.

This project began a long time ago when the rules for this particular model were first released in the original edition of Apocalypse for Warhammer 40 K. I knew I wanted to build one of these bad boys, but I just wasn't quite sure how to go about it. Normally when a project like this appeals to me I take a long time to consider the bits I want to use. Then slowly but surely I start the long process of acquiring said bits.

For this particular project I knew I wanted to start with the biggest tank I could find, and of course that would be the Baneblade. I picked one up on eBay for a steal. The trick was it was already pre-assembled for the most part so I knew I was gonna have to gut certain parts from the model.

For the tower I wanted something with plenty of skulls already in place and the Warhammer fantasy range had just the model I needed. Weight would not be an issue because of the overall weight of the Baneblade model. Next up I was going to need some cannons.

The Forgefiend kit comes with two great ectoplasm cannons. They don't seem to be a preferred variation for that particular model, so there was plenty of them on eBay to spare. However I needed some other sort of multi-barreled cannons for the turrets. I wanted something that looked kind of old and derelict, so I went with used more than Organ Guns. They have four barrels a piece which is perfect for this particular model.

Mounting the guns required a bit of ingenuity,. For the Organ guns I mounted them above the side turrets.. This is pretty straight forward, but for the Forgefiends guns I wanted to mount them inside the tower coming through the parapets. For this I had to go inside the tower, already fully built. Although no one will ever be able to see it, there is actually a sort of wench mechanism inside the tower utilizing bits from Imperial guard Valkyrie. This allowed me to hold the guns in place. Then with a little glue and some putty I was able to hold them in place permanently to ensure that they would never shift around.

With all of my basic bits acquired I sit out to assemble the model. You can generally tell how it was assembled. The only place where I had to sort of blend the tower into the tank as you can see, I used some sculpting putty.. I went with the continuation of the stone facade, as this would blend nicely into the finished model once painted.

After all that was said and done with I went about sealing any gaps with said putty and sculpting on any small details that I needed. I used a variety of small bits lying around my bits box to ensure the model looked chaos enough, and didn't betray it's Imperial origins.

This model sold on my exclusive eBay store a few months ago for a fair price. Which was great for me, as I'm always looking for my next project to build and I always need money.

Even though GW is releasing new kids all the time, and granted they look better than ever before, there is always a need for someone out there that can build something from scratch, or better yet kit bash something really stretches the imagination.